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C-SPAN: Forcing me to clean up my act, in more than one way

Promoting its “In Depth” TV program on my latest book, C-SPAN links to this website. And I realized that although the site has been updated with Breaking In: the Rise of Sonia Sotomayor and the Politics of Justice, my last blog entry is from January 2012. So here’s an update for those who took the time to click on the C-SPAN link and who also want to find out about the upcoming Book TV session. I’m still reporting on the Supreme Court (for Reuters since February 2012), mainly with long-range projects, analyses, and new editing responsibilities. I’m still writing books on the side, too. This latest is a story about two forces that merged providentially—the large ambitions of a Puerto Rican girl from the Bronx and the increased political presence of Hispanics in the United States. Like my Antonin Scalia biography, American Original, this political history of Sotomayor’s 2009 Supreme Court nomination is published by Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux. We’re fortunate C-SPAN is devoting its three-hour monthly book program to it on Oct. 5. As regular viewers know, An author fields calls for most of that time. C-SPAN also shows video of where the author writes. For me, it is in a second-floor spare bedroom and a first-floor den, mainly late at night and on weekends, amid stacks of documents, notebooks, tapes, CDs, and reference books. Toward the end of these projects, as I hunt through materials for elusive end-note citations, my research spills into other rooms of the house. Friends and relatives who visit during these crunch periods can be traumatized; my husband and daughter have learned to live with it, knowing that I actually have a system. When C-SPAN showed up last week, I’d cleaned up most everything. But I did have to keep the thorough, persistent producer from that spare bedroom. She asked to film, at least, the stairs heading up to it. I relented but not before I ran up to close all doors. Please call in on Oct. 5. Ask me about anything, except what lurks inside.